O Maker who spun the galaxies like silk,
Who cupped the ember of each soul in palm,
Who whispered Live and color flooded bone—
How can the fashioned curse the Fashioner?
You carved the cradle of their ribs from mercy,
Painted dawn across the canvas of their eyes,
Set love’s small furnace burning in the chest
To mirror, faintly, Thine unquenchable fire.
Yet they, the clay still warm from holy hands,
Have learned to spit at heaven with their mouths,
To mock the tenderness that formed the stars,
To trade the Giver for the glittering gift.
They hoard the life You lent as if their own,
They build their Babel-towers out of pride,
They nail fresh wounds into the palms of grace,
And call it freedom while the sky grows dim.
How can the child of dust blaspheme the Dawn?
How can the branch revile the living Root?
They do it daily—quietly, then loudly—
With every heart that chooses self over You.
They do it in the silence of ingratitude,
In rage flung skyward when the rain withholds,
In laughter at the cross where mercy bled,
In doctrines fashioned after their own face.
And when they will not have the Son of God,
When they suppress the truth that shouts in creation,
When they exchange the glory of the incorruptible
For images of mortal man and creeping things—
Then, in solemn justice, You give them over:
First to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts,
Then to dishonorable passions that consume,
And finally—to a depraved mind,
To do what ought not to be done.
They become filled with every kind of unrighteousness:
Wickedness, greed, malice, envy, murder, strife,
Deceit, malignity; gossips, slanderers, haters of God,
Insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil,
Disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Though they know God’s righteous decree—
That those who practice such things deserve death—
They not only do them but give approval to those who practice.
And still—O scandal of unending love—
You do not crush the reed already bent,
You do not snuff the wick that gutters low,
But call, and call, and call them home again.
Have mercy, Author of their every breath,
Who gave them being when they were not,
And grant that some might yet turn from darkness,
Repent, believe the gospel of the Son,
And be delivered from the bondage of a mind
Given over to what destroys.
For only in beholding Christ the crucified
Can they perceive the depth of what they’ve done—
And in that sight, be broken, then remade,
Children no longer strangers to their Father.
Passionately Pursuing Christ 